department. In March, 1831, he succeeded Laffitte as president of the council, with the department of the interior; Louis (q. v.) being minister of finance, Sébastiani of foreign affairs, and De Rigny of the marine. (See France, in the Appendix, at the end of the work.) The chief endeavor of M. Périer's ministry, so far, appears to be to keep France at peace with Europe, and thereby to make commerce and manufactures flourish, to establish civil liberty and repress the military spirit; and, secondly, to render the government more firm. The opposition reproach him with ignominiously courting the favor of the absolute monarchs, with having deprived France of the honorable and elevated position due to her in the European system, with being unwilling to follow up, frankly, the principles of the "July revolution," and with having sacrificed Italy to Austria, and Poland to Russia. PERIGEE, OF PERIGEUM. (See Apogee.) PERIHELION, OF PERIHELIUM; that point in the orbit of a planet, or comet, which is nearest to the sun; being the extremity of its transverse axis, nearest to that focus in which the sun is placed, and thus opposed to the aphelion, which is the opposite extremity of the same axis. The ancient astronomers used, instead of this, the term perigaum, as they placed the earth in the centre. The perihelion distances of the several planets, the mean distance of the earth from the sun being taken as unity, are as follows: Mercury, .1815831 Venus, .7164793 Earth, 9831468 Mars, 1.4305595 Vesta, 2.2797800 Juno, 2.4122190 ending succession. Chronology depends entirely upon astronomy; and before the latter had made known the true motions of the heavenly bodies, the former remained in a confused state. The principal periods of the Greeks were-Meton's lunar period of 19 years, or 6940 days, according to which the Greeks computed their astronomical calendar from 432 B. C.; the period of Calippus (330 B. C.), or that of Alexander, which comprised 4 times 19, or 76 years minus 1 day; and the still more accurate period of Hipparchus, of 304 years, which made the tropical solar year only 6 minutes and 16 seconds too long. The Roman indiction (q. v.) was a period of 15 years, the origin of which is not very clear. The Julian period, invented by Scaliger, consisting of 7980 Julian years, was intended to reduce to the same result the different computations of the year of the birth of Christ from the creation. It is the product of the numbers 28, 19 and 15; or the solar, lunar and indiction cycle. (See Cycle.) After 28 times 19, or 532 years, the new and full moons return in the same order, upon the same day of the week and month, in the Julian calendar, and the three chronological cycles (the solar cycle of 28 years, the lunar cycle of 19 years, and the indiction cycle of 15 years) recommence at the same time. This period is also called the great Paschal cycle, and the Victorian or Dionysian period. The year of the birth of Christ, in the Julian period, is 4714. It is now little used, as we reckon by years before and after Christ.-In history, a period is a certain division of time, determined by events, giving to it the character of a whole. A judicious division of history into periods is very necessary for a clear view of the whole, and, in fact, is method of studying history. The ancients necessary result of an intelligent wrote general history ethnographically (q. v.), and chronologically, or in the way of annals. Bossuet, in his Discours sur l'Histoire universelle, and Offerhaus, in his Compendium Historia universalis, divided history by centuries, and by subdivisions of the latter; but modern historians have preferred to divide universal history by periods. Voltaire, in his Essai sur l'Histoire générale, Millot, Condillac, Gatterer, Schlözer, and, in general, all the principal modern historians, have followed this plan. The progress of civilization and of civil liberty is more important than the order of dynasties, or the fluctuations of power; and the periods of history ought to be founded upon the various stages or manifestations Ceres, 2.6890660 PERILLUS. (See Phalaris.) PERIMETER, in geometry; the bounds or limits of any figure or body The perimeters of surfaces or figures are lines; those of bodies are surfaces. In circular figures, instead of perimeter, we say circumference, or periphery. PERIOD (from the Greek Epiodos, a circuit); a division of time, or of events occurring in it. The astronomer calls the time of a revolution of a heavenly body, or the time occupied in its return to the same point of its orbit, its period. (See Planets, and Kepler.) In chronology, period denotes a division of time, during which certain phenomena complete their courses, which are repeated in never care. of these. A judicious division into periods can be effected only by a clear and philosophical view of history. Philosophical views are the great object of the study; but incautious philosophizing often leads the reader to deductions drawn from his own imagination rather than from a rigid scrutiny of facts. The division of history into periods, founded on general views, requires, therefore, great The philosophico-historical school of Germany, at the head of which, at present, we may put professor Hegel, has fallen into glaring errors in this respect. This same censure, however, by no means belongs to all the philosophical historians of that country, but should be confined to the school which is particularly termed philosophical. The division into periods must vary, both according to the chief aim of the historian and according to the amount of historical knowledge existing in his time. Thus a historian who proposes to write a history of religions, or who thinks that religious revolutions have always been the most important, and are the best standards by which to measure the other changes in human society, will establish his division into periods accordingly. Another will take, as his basis, the political changes of nations. The most perfect division would be that which should adopt, as the basis of each period, that feature which was the most strongly characteristic of it, which is not always easy, as one principle often continues strongly operative, while another has risen to an important influence, threatening to supersede it. In such a division of universal history, civilization, religion, government, learning, important inventions, &c., would all become, in turn, the bases of the various periods. (See Epochs, and History.) The is not difficult to follow their connexion and to form a distinct conception of the whole. In some languages, the rules for the construction of periods are stricter than in others: some allow great liberty. To the former belongs the English language; to the latter, the Greek, Latin and German. The genius of the German language, in particular, allows of very long and involved periods, in which perspicuity frequently suffers seriously; and it often happens that the whole meaning of a long sentence in that language depends upon the last word, so that we are kept in suspense as to the ideas conveyed, until the decisive word appears. following rules should be observed in the construction of a period: 1. The chief idea must be made prominent, whilst the secondary ideas are presented with a force proportioned to their importance; 2. there should be a certain proportion between the length of the different members; 3. the subordinate parts should each serve for the more distinct explanation of the preceding, and should not be too much accumulated; 4. the ideas to be conveyed should be presented in a certain gradation, from the less distinct to the more distinct, from the weaker to the stronger, the less important to the more important, except the contrary effect is expressly intended. Important as the logical and grammatical arrangement of a period is, the musical and rythmical is by no means to be neglected. Much depends here upon tact, but study can much improve this. There is a harmony in language which, if it cannot convince, yet can strongly affect, can carry the reader along, or impress a sentiment indelibly. Yet undue refinement, an overlabored choice of phrase, is to be studiously avoided. The rhythm of a period (the numerus) corA period, or sentence, in writing, is a responds to the metre in poetry, and is series of logically connected passages; a important for all languages, particularly passage developed in properly connected for those which, like the Greek or Gerparts. Aristotle's definition, which makes man, have a real prosody. Only a few it a discourse having its beginning and general rules can be given for rhythm: the end in itself, is indistinct. Every passage ear of the writer or speaker must be his would then be a period; and, on the other principal guide. The beginning of a pehand, a whole speech, a whole work, riod should be fitted to gain the attention would be a period. Periods should not of the hearer. Hence it is well to choose be too long, but it is impossible to fix the such words as fill the ear; e. g. in lanlimits distinctly. Cicero's rule, that a pe- guages which have a prosody, the first riod ought not to be longer than four paon (-), the ionicus a majore hexameters, is as insufficient as the other, ~), the third epitrites (— — ~ —), that it should be sufficiently short to be spoken at one breath, without exhaustion of the lungs. If it is properly constructed, the voice finds resting-places enough; and, if its parts are logically connected, it and some others. The conclusion ought to satisfy the ear by its firm and full sound. The following feet are therefore desirable: the fourth pæon (~~~), the amphibrachys (~-~), the antibacchius (——~), -) the dactylus iambus (- -), the ditrochæus (~~), which it is best to have in one word, and the dactylus trochaus (—~~~~), which, however, on account of its hexametrical form, is to be used with great caution. The period should have a proper proportion of pauses, so as to be equally removed from total irregularity, and from a constantly-returning symmetry which approaches to metrical rhythm. The construction of sentences attained a perfection with the Greeks, which has not been reached by any other nation, for two reasons, their deep and universal feeling of the beautiful, and the richness of their charming idiom in participles and well-sounding terminations. The Romans imitated the Greeks, but the example of Cicero is not to be closely followed, as he amplifies his phrases too much. In physiology, periods designate the various stages in the developement and decay of the animal organization, which are distinguished by a marked character; as the period of childhood, of puberty, &c. Periods also denote, in medicine, those repetitions of phenomena which we observe in certain diseases, e. g. in intermittent fevers, the increase of the disorder in the evening, &c. Periodical diseases are such as, at certain times, make regular attacks, or are attended with regular aggravations. This property is very common, and there is hardly a disease in which it has not been observed in the case of some individual. On the contrary, there is no disease which always pursues its course periodically. PERIODICALS, in the proper sense of the word, are all publications which appear at regular intervals; and in the wide sense which the word has now received, it may even be considered as embracing those publications which, as is not unfrequently the case in Germany, appear from time to time, yet neither at regular intervals nor in numbers of a fixed amount of pages (Zwanglose Hefte). The periodical press, comprising newspapers, reviews, magazines, annual registers, &c., devoted to religion, politics, the sciences, arts, amusements, husbandry, &c., is one of the most interesting and most momentous consequences of the invention of the art of printing. At first, slips of paper containing a few particulars, intended principally for the gratification of curiosity, periodicals have now become one of the most important parts of the machinery of society, particularly in England, France and the U. States. Without an acquaintance with this department of literature, the present state of knowledge and civilization cannot be understood, and the historian will find it essential to a comprehension of the great movements of our time. Châteaubriand threw Villèle from his saddle, by articles in the Journal des Débats; and when we see editors of newspapers drawing up a protest so noble and historical as that of the Paris editors on July 26, 1830, and immediately afterwards shedding their blood for the rights therein maintained; and find statesmen like Brougham, Mackintosh, Peel, contributing articles to English reviews,-we cannot be surprised at the importance of the periodical press. We have given, in the article Newspapers, a sketch of the history and present state of that branch of periodical literature. The first journal of the character of a review was the Journal des Savants, established in 1663. Its success gave rise to Les Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, by Bayle; Le Mercure, by Visé; Le Journal de Trévoux, set up by P. Catrou, a Jesuit; in Italy, to the Giornale de' Literati; in Germany, to the Acta Eruditorum (q. v.). In England, the first review of this sort was the Monthly, commenced in 1749, and still published. (For further information, see the article Review.) The utility of periodicals has been very great; they have spread knowledge through quarters to which the bulky productions of the sixteenth and seventeenth century never could have penetrated. The reviews, in particular, have done much to promote the cause of truth and just thinking. But the periodical press, like every thing else in the world, has its bad side as well as its good, and one of its bad consequences has been a taste for superficial accomplishment. Periodicals, however, have become a matter of necessity, as the circle of civilization has widened, as the various nations have become more and more interested in each other, and as the great interests of mankind have been more deeply investigated and more universally discussed. For a citizen of Athens, the market and the gymnasia may have afforded a sufficient supply of news to keep him acquainted with the events generally interesting to his community; the wits of Florence may have found the shop of Burchiello (q. v.) a sufficient centre of intelligence; but our times require much more regular, extensive and effectual means for the diffusion of information on the events and productions of the day, and for the discussion of the numberless im portant subjects which occupy the minds rates the faculty of generation and nu of men. PERIOSTEUM. (See Bone.) PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHY. The philosophy of Aristotle (q. v.) received this name either from his custom of teaching while walking (spinarev), or from the place where it was taught a walk planted with trees. We can give but a brief sketch of the system of this powerful mind. Philosophy was to Aristotle the science of knowledge. Direct knowledge, by which we know immediately the general and necessary, rests on experience. According to him, logic, as a preparatory science, as the organ of all science, has the precedence of all. Logic either treats of appearances, and is then called dialectics; or of truth, and is then called analytics. In his Physics, he opposes the two systems then prevailing (that of emanation, which taught that all things emanated from God; and the atomic, which explained the origin of things by the concourse of atoms, eternal, like God), and assumes the eternity of the world. According to him, the heavens are of a more perfect and divine nature than other bodies. In the centre of the heavens is the earth, round and stationary. The stars, like the sky, beings of a higher nature, but of grosser matter, move, though not of themselves, but by the impulse of the primum mobile. Every change presupposes a substratum (substance), that by which a thing becomes possible; a form, by which a thing becomes real; and privation, inasmuch as the existence of a certain form is founded on the exclusion of others. All change or motion takes place in regard to substance, quantity, quality and place. There are three kinds of substances-those alternately in motion and at rest, as the animals; those perpetually in motion, as the sky; and those eternally stationary. The last, in themselves immovable and imperishable, are the source and origin of all motion. Among them there must be one first being, unchangeable, which acts without the intervention of any other being. All that is proceeds from it; it is the most perfect intelligence-God. The immediate action of this first mover-happy in the contemplation of himself-extends only to the heavens; the other inferior spheres are moved by other incorporeal and eternal substances, which the popular belief adores as gods, and to which it attributes bodies, contrary to their nature. The soul is the principle of life in the organic body, and is inseparable from the body. As faculties of the soul, Aristotle enume conse trition; of sensation, memory and recollection; the faculty of thinking, or the understanding; and the faculty of desiring, which is divided into appetite and volition. The ethical principles of Aristotle have been often misunderstood, partly on account of the degeneracy of his school; and he has been considered a supporter of the philosophy whose principle is pleasure; but to Aristotle, the best and highest (i. e. that which is desirable for itself) is the happiness which originates from virtuous actions. Virtue, according to him, consists in acting according to nature: by the expression "according to nature," he means, keeping the mean between the two extremes of the too much and the too little. Thus valor, in his view the first of virtues, is a mean between cowardice and rashness; temperance is an observance of the mean in respect to sensual enjoyments. Human actions, to be called moral, must be independent of external motives; otherwise they are but phenomena, the laws of which belong to physics, and are therefore indifferent to the practical philosopher. Self-action, and quently the power to act or not to act, to act in one way or another, is the condition of all morality. Perfect happiness can be attained only in political society or the state; but the best form of state polity must be determined by circumstances. The school of Aristotle (the peripatetic school) continued at Athens uninterruptedly till the time of Augustus. Among those who proceeded from it are Theophrastus, author of several works on natural history; Strato of Lampsacus, whose views are but imperfectly known to us from some fragments preserved by Cicero and Plutarch; and Demetrius Phalereus. (q. v.) No one of the philosophical schools of antiquity maintained its influence so long as the peripatetic. Even down to modern times, its principles served as the rule in philosophical inquiries, and some countries still honor Aristotle as an infallible master of wisdom. The Arabians did not first make him known to the philosophers of modern Europe, but they extended his authority. The acuteness and profoundness which appear in his works, his dogmatic tone, his subtile distinctions, and the technical language, first introduced by him into philosophy, pleased them more than Plato's philosophical doubts and allegorical language. But we find him in the Christian church as early as the time of the Arian controversy; and while the influence of Plato was diminished by the heresies of Platonizing teachers, that of Aristotle, which the commentaries of Boëthius on his translation of Aristotle's works contributed to extend, was continually increasing. (See Scholastics.) When the works of Aristotle again began to be read in the original language, a peripatetic sect, differing from the scholastic, arose, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which was divided into the Averroists and Alexandrians (so called, from celebrated commentators on Aristotle). To the former belonged Alex. Achillinus, Zimara and Cæsalpinus; to the latter, the famous Pomponatius and others. PERIPETIA; an unexpected change, which takes place in the condition of the chief person of an epic or dramatic poem, a novel, &c. Aristotle gives, as an instance, the scene in Edipus, in which the news intended to relieve the king's fears, and to cheer him, produces the contrary effect, by discovering to him his origin. Necessary as the peripetia is for giving interest to great compositions, a ludicrous effect is often produced by young poets heaping misfortunes upon their heroes, to surprise the reader with an unexpected deliverance. The Germans call such compositions Rettungsstücke (saving-pieces). PERIPHERY. (See Circle.) PERIPNEUMONY. (See Pneumony.) PERIPTERAL TEMPLE. (See Architecture, p. 341.) PERISTYLE. (See Architecture, p. 341.) PERIZONIUS, James, a learned Dutch philologian of the seventeenth century, born at Damme in 1651, studied at Deventer and Leyden, and became professor of history, rhetoric and Greek, at the latter place, where he died in 1715. His historical and philological works are numerous. The principal are Animadversiones Historica (1685), a treasure of learning; Origines Babylonica et Egyptiaca (1711); editions of Ælian's Various Histories, of the Minerva of Sanctius, &c. PERJURY, by the common law of England, is a crime committed by one who, being lawfully required to depose the truth in any judicial proceeding, wilfully swears falsely in a point material to the question in dispute. It has, however, been held, that a man may be indicted for perjury for swearing that he believed a fact to be true, which he knew to be false. The common law takes no notice of any false swearing, but such as is committed in some court of justice, having power to administer the oath, or before some officer or magistrate invested with similar authority, in some proceeding relative to a civil suit or criminal prosecution; for the law esteems all other oaths unnecessary, at least, and hence will not punish the breach of them. Thus, if a person swears falsely in a voluntary affidavit in any extrajudicial matter, he is not liable to any punishment. By numerous statutes in England and America, the penalties of perjury have been extended to false oaths by electors, bankrupts, insolvent debtors, &c. By the English law, the evidence of one witness alone is not sufficient to convict on an indictment for perjury; in such case, there would be only one oath against another; but it is sufficient if corroborated by other independent evidence. Subornation of perjury is the offence of procuring a man to commit perjury. By the law of Moses (Deuteronomy xix, 19), if a man testify falsely against his brother, it shall be done unto him as he had thought to do against his brother. And this is the principle adopted in the laws of many of the states of modern Europe. By the law of the Twelve Tables, " perjurii pœna divina, exitium; humana, dedecus." Gellius, xx. 1, mentions, that some persons who had perjured themselves, by giving false testimony, were thrown from the Tarpeian rock. The civil law punished perjury committed in swearing by the name of God, in civil cases, by infamy (Digest, lib. ii, tit. 4; Code, lib. xii. tit. 1); but the punishment of perjury committed in swearing by the safety of the emperor, was death (Code, iv. 1:2); by the genius of the prince, beating and scourging (Dig. lib. xii, tit. 2, 13). The punishment of perjury, by the common law in England was, anciently, death; afterwards banishment, or cutting out the tongue; then forfeiture of goods. At the present time, it is fine, imprisonment, and pillory, at the discretion of the court, to which the statute Geo. II, c. 25 adds a power in the court to order the offender to be sent to the house of correction for a term not exceeding seven years, or to be transported for the same period. The offender is incapacitated from giving evidence in a court of justice; but a pardon will restore his competency. By the law of the U. States, the punishment on conviction for perjury committed in any cause depending in any of the courts of the U. States, or in any deposition taken in pursuance of the laws of the U. States, is imprisonment not above three years, and fine not exceeding $800, pillory one hour, and disqualification for being a witness until the judgment is reversed. By the capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis le Débonnaire, perjury was punished |